NSA Political Economics - Page A1

WASHINGTON DESK - The National Security Agency [NSA] carried on secret electronic surveillance of telephone conversations between Beijing and Communist Chinese agents in the United States, according to Justice Department officials on Wednesday.

The conversations are evidence that Beijing was ready, willing, and able to illegally funnel money to American politicians in the 1996 presidential election.

The New York Times reported Thursday that law enforcement officials told them, the FBI prepared a list of about 30 members of Congress who the bureau thought might be subjects of the Chinese effort. But, only warned half a dozen of them, in private meetings last June.

The Washington Post reported in February the existence of an intelligence report on interest by China in influencing the 1996 elections in the United States. But the involvement of the National Security Agency, how the information was gathered and how it was handled by the FBI have not been previously disclosed.

The officials who spoke on Wednesday, but only on the condition of anonymity, said the NSA, started the Communist China electronic surveillance early in 1996.

The information was then passed, as is routine practice, to top counterintelligence officials at FBI headquarters and, in June, to the two officials at the National Security Council.

The sensitive NSA report of the Chinese government actions to funnel illegal political contributions to American politicians contradicts Beijing's repeated denials that it has ever tried to influence U.S. U.S. elections.

The complete listing of the 30 politicians identified by the FBI could not be obtained on Wednesday. Four of them, have now come forwards and identified themselves as being alerted by the FBI in June of 1996, including Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan(D) of New York, Dianne Feinstein(D), Barbara Boxer(D), and Representative Nancy Pelosi(D) of California.

The members of Congress were told, FBI sources said, that intelligence information suggested they could be the targets of a Chinese plot to use money to buy influence with them. The Times reported the FBI sources said the intelligence indicated that the Chinese were envious of the lobbying success in Washington of Taiwan, a major irritant to Beijing, and wanted to even the score.

The 1995 U.S. visit of Taiwan's president, Lee Teng-Hui, to Cornell University, his alma mater, cast a chill over relations between the United States and China that lasted into 1996.

Public disclosure of the 1996 FBI briefing of two White House NSC aides has led to a highly unusual public rift between the Clinton administration and the FBI on Monday, when President Clinton claimed the FBI agents involved had told White House aides not to share the information with Clinton. However, the FBI then publicly contradicted president Clinton's claim.

On Tuesday, Justice Department officials said that the FBI statement was intemperate and misleading because the agents had in fact cautioned the White House aides to be careful in disseminating the information.

But, on Wednesday, attorney general Janet Reno was attemppting to put a happy-face on the situation by telling a Senate committee that it was just a misunderstanding among the officials involved.

The information about possible Chinese influence buying in Congress was subject to Reno's 1995 guidelines, and was collected without a court order or the authorization of the special court that approves eavesdropping in national security cases.

In consequence of attorney general Janet Reno's Justice Department guidelines, there was circumvention of court ordered warrants for the relectronic bugging and collection of the sensitive information. That could muddy the waters and possibly contaminate any criminal prosecutions that might otherwise have resulted from the information gathered about Communist Chinese illegal political copntibutions to presidential and congressional campaigns. <

Meanwhile, two top Democrat Party fund-raisers told reporters they were told by first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton that the mansion is out-of-bounds for events intended to stroke deep-pocketed political donors.